Justice Stevens in a laboriously tortured dissent in McDonald v City of Chicago: In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. ___, ___ (2008) (slip op., at 1), the Court answered the question whether a federal enclave’s “prohibition on the possession of usable handguns in the home violates the Second Amendment to the Constitution.” […]
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Justice Thomas, perhaps the only justice on the court who routinely gives deference to the Constitution rather than ideology, or, even worse, Congress, in concurrence in McDonald v City of Chicago: I agree with the Court that the Fourteenth Amendment makes the right to keep and bear arms set forth in the Second Amendment “fully […]
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Justice Scalia, despite being the author of Heller which essentially spells out exactly what the right to bear arms means, remains silent except only to dispute one point made by Justice Stevens in his dissent: that the 2a doesn’t fit the mold of substantive rights to be incorporated because “I know so.” I can find […]
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More quotes from McDonald v City of Chicago: Self-defense is a basic right, recognized by many legal systems from ancient times to the present day, and in Heller, we held that individual self-defense is “the central component” of the Second Amendment right. (footnote removed) [. . .] In sum, it is clear that the Framers […]
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Justice Alito via his majority opinion in todays McDonald v City of Chicago decision incorporating the 2nd Amendment as a fundamental right not to be trampled [PDF] by states and localities: Two years ago, in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. ___ (2008), we held that the Second Amendment protects the right to […]
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Joan Biskupic via USA Today: By a 5-4 vote, the justices said that once rights have been read and questioning begun, a suspect must clearly declare that he wants to remain silent and cannot simply be silent. If I have to speak up in order to be silent, what’s the fucking point of having a […]
Julian Sanchez via Newsweek: we now take for granted that the interstate-commerce power constitutes a blank check, not just when Congress seeks to rectify gross historical iniquity, but for such purposes as overriding state decisions to permit local cultivation of medical marijuana. I wonder how quickly the classic Libertard argument that states rights is a […]
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SCOTUS unanimously ruled that the NFL cannot sign league-wide exclusivity contracts with vendors which affect an individual team’s ability to negotiate contracts for itself, essentially stating that the NFL is not one company, but a collective made up of 32 separately owned and operated companies. Good for SCOTUS. I wonder if this means an end […]
Nathan Koppel via The Wall Street Journal: Kagan articulates the basic proposition that judicial review is a necessary and desirable bulwark against majority will. But, she writes, review should be exercised with caution. Though I absolutely agree with Kagan that judicial review is a necessary role in protecting Americans from the tyranny of the majority, […]
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Justice Clarence Thomas via his scathing dissenting opinion of today’s United States v Comstock decision: The Constitution does not vest in Congress the authority to protect society from every bad act that might befall it.1 Well said. Too bad even those Justices who clearly see where this decision leads, a place where Congress has the […]
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